Conversation Partner

        My conversation partner,  Linda, and I met up for the first time this past Saturday at Market 

Square for lunch. After we selected our food and picked a table, I began to ask her questions. My first

question for her was how she felt about the food at the BLUU, and food in the United States in

general compared to the food she is used to eating in China. To my surprise, Linda loves the BLUU.

She enjoys that the BLUU has many options she cannot find at home. Outside of the BLUU, she said

her favorite restaurant is Subway because she can point to the menu items she wants without

worrying about an error in translation. I thought that was very interesting, and had never thought 

about how difficult it must be ordering food in a foreign country.  

         I asked Linda what “American food” is to her, and she described pizza, hamburgers, and 

cheese. We bonded for several minutes over the importance of pizza. 

         Back home, Linda said, she went to high school at boarding school just outside of Shanghai, so 

she was used to being away from her family for long periods of time. She mentioned that she video 

chats with her father, mother, and grandmother once a week. I asked her if any of her boarding 

school friends went to international schools after graduating, and she replied that she was the only 

one. 

      She was pretty interested in what Americans do for fun. I told her about my typical TCU 

weekend, including hanging out with friends, avoiding responsibilities, and going to football 

games. 

Linda thought it was intriguing how much Americans invest in sports. In fact, she had no idea we 

had a football game later that day against OU. Linda explained that rather than focusing on sports,

 her culture tends to focus on the importance of academics. 

        The topic changed to holidays. I was interested to know what holidays are celebrated in China, 

and Linda told me about Chinese New Year traditions. She told me her family used to do fireworks, 

but they have ceased because they are not environmentally friendly. Linda in turn asked me about 

Halloween here, and I was more than happy to tell her, as Halloween is my favorite holiday. She was 

excited to tell me that she already had a Halloween costume picked out, and showed me a picture on 

her phone.  

       A lot of the time, I could not understand what she was saying, so I had to ask her to repeat 

herself. I can only imagine how hard it is to speak more than one language. A few times she had to 

bring up an application on her phone to translate a word from Chinese to English so she could 

describe what she was talking about.